Erynn Johns, 16, who is from Texas, was swimming off Nantucket, Massachusetts. She was filming her family's holiday experience in the ocean using a GoPro and a selfie stick when a rip current suddenly dragged her underwater.

"I inhaled a lot of water at that point and I could not breathe under there," she was quoted as saying by ABC News US.

Her father Derrick Johns clasped the other end of the selfie stick to keep her afloat and tried to pull her out of water. But he too was pulled away in the water by the strong current. Erynn, nevertheless, made it to the shore somehow.

Lifeguards and onlookers on the beach then rushed to help her parent.

"I did a few tours overseas with the Marines and I never felt that kind of fatigue or fear. I was semiconscious and when they put me in the truck they said my oxygen level was really low," Derrick was quoted as saying by local media.